


Follow Me (Out Of The Jungle)

by Her_Madjesty



Series: Twelve Days of Christmas - 2020 [5]
Category: Much Ado About Nothing (1993)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Jumanji Fusion, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:47:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28004904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Her_Madjesty/pseuds/Her_Madjesty
Summary: The box that washes up beneath Messina’s docks goes unnoticed for longer than it anticipates.
Relationships: Hero/Don John (Much Ado About Nothing)
Series: Twelve Days of Christmas - 2020 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2037376
Comments: 6
Kudos: 18





	Follow Me (Out Of The Jungle)

**Author's Note:**

> On the fifth day of Christmas, a harried writer gave to thee...a Jumanji!AU!
> 
> Technically speaking, I have 20 minutes left in this December 10th, so this _technically_ isn't late! I hope the extensive word count will woo your forgiveness. In the meanwhile, enjoy this absolute crack of an idea treated with far too serious a tone and another title involving a weird use of parentheses. 
> 
> The general thought I had when pulling this piece together was as follows: what if Don John is a villain...but in such a way that he is obviously being forced into such a role? More so than he is by the social constraints in Messina during the canon play. Thus - this. NPC falls in love with a PC against his own will.
> 
> I will see you all on the 12th!

Part I

The box that washes up beneath Messina’s docks goes unnoticed for longer than it anticipates.

The port itself is not a particularly noisy one. The sailors there, however, are satisfied with their lives; they go to and from their ships without so much as ever looking down. The children do not venture so close to the water, not even when lured, and even the fishwives who turn their heads at the box’s foreign thrumming end up called away to some other duty.

But Beatrice and Hero have spent the better part of their lives making their own fun. The wards of the governor sneak through the vineyards and down to the dock more often than Leonato knows. They purchase sweets and walk the beaches until the sun starts to shine on the horizon, at which point they have to race back to the villa before their maids wake – or before the guards they’d bribed are forced to give them away.

The thrumming of an unfamiliar box down in the water by the docks is almost irresistible to this kind of prey. And so Beatrice cradles it against her chest while Hero tugs on her hand, keeping a wary eye on the blue-orange horizon.

And Jumanji is pleased.

*

They attend to their duties for the day, these two girls, a year before either of their lives will so dramatically change. In some distance duchy, there is a war led by a princeling to whom Leonato owes his allegiance, but on the day-to-day, there is only the vineyard and a bit of trade and the responsibilities Hero, if not Beatrice, knows she must take on to herself even as her father begins to search the land for her husband.

But once the day is done, Beatrice can work her magic. She pulls together some of the more patient members of the staff – dear Ursula and Margaret. Together, the four women settle on the floor of Hero and Beatrice’s shared bedroom, better to tenderly lift the lid from the unusual box found down by the shore.

Inside, a wooden board unfurls, leaving a glowing green gem to rest in the middle.

Ursula crosses herself, but Beatrice, Hero, and Margaret all lean closer.

“Jumanji,” Hero murmurs, before Beatrice gently pushes her aside.

“A game for those who seek to find a way to leave their world behind,” she reads from the base of the board. The smile she gifts the rest of the room is a broad and toothy thing. “What good timing, this little thing – I’d just told my cousin that if I had to spend another week without any manner of excitement from the mainland that I’d tie up my hair and go tramping after the men of Aragon to sign on as a powder monkey.”

“And what an addition to the contingent you’d make,” Margaret teases, while Hero brings out the pieces they need for the game. “You could bash your wit against the enemy’s armor and send them all scuttling for their mothers.”

Hero doesn’t bother to stifle her giggle as she passes out the little figures that have come with the strange game. Beatrice receives both a carved lion and a set of dice; Margaret receives a monkey. Ursula only accepts her elephant after some good-natured ribbing, though she makes more of a show of glaring at the gaggle of girls as she begins to relax. Hero satisfies herself with a small, running zebra and settles down on the floor before letting Beatrice walk them through the rules of the game.

When all is said and done, it is Beatrice who rolls the dice first. Margaret follows.

Ursula rolls an unfortunately three and receives a thorough booing from her peers. The girls’ laughter overwhelms the subtle shake of the house.

Hero takes up the dice as something knocks against their window. Ursula turns, as does Beatrice, but Margaret only leans in closer, waiting for her to roll.

“Did you see that?” Beatrice is saying, somewhere in the background, as Hero’s dice hit the board.

The hunting dogs in their kennels begin to bark.

But it is too late.

Hero looks up, following Beatrice’s gaze as her dice stare up at the ceiling – two miniature cyclops assessing their victim.

“Oh, bad luck, my dear,” Margaret says. “But there is no need to look so pale! We promise to give you all the chances you need to...recover….”

Her voice trails off as Hero stares.

For outside the window, a small creature – a monkey, with white tufts of fur puffed up around its face and a venerable pack behind it – has taken up residence in one of the villa’s tallest trees.

The game’s board and gem, once glowing but otherwise benign, heave. A message appears towards the bottom of the board, written in curling cursive:

 _Roll a five or an eight_ _to ensure_ _her escape._

And, in the same breath, the faces of Hero’s companions blur – then go dark.

Hero closes her eyes for a second, maybe less.

When she opens them again, the villa is gone.

Humidity, drenching and heavy, replaces Messina’s comfortable warmth in an instant. Hero looks up – and there is no ceiling above her head. Instead, there are trees, larger than any she’s ever seen, and shrieking creatures – those same monkeys that had been staring at her in the darkness.

“Beatrice?”

Her voice echoes in the still air. One of the monkeys leans in from its perch, coming within an inch of Hero’s nose. Hero feels her breath coming faster in her chest; feels a wave of dizziness nearly unsettle her stomach.

“Beatrice?” she calls again, her voice breaking. “Margaret? Ursula?”

The monkey tilts its head – and screams.

Hero shrieks.

All at once, the monkeys descend. Hero stumbles backwards, hands batting the creatures away as they give chase, driving her into the depths of the jungle.

Above the fray, a flock of birds take flight. They pay the goings on of the jungle no mind. Instead, they circle with the wind, following the sound of another scream as it travels away from the monkeys’ grove and towards the hippos’ marsh, towards the southern tip of the jungle. Satisfied, the flock takes to the north, chasing the distant trails of smoke curling into the evening air.

*

Hero spends her first week in Jumanji barely clinging to life.

The hoard of monkeys drives her straight into the jaws of the hippos, who threaten to bring the full weight of their broken teeth down on her as she stumbles through their marsh. Only when night falls in earnest is she able to scramble onto a dry patch of land and burrow into the roots of a tree. She makes her camp there for the night, arms wrapped around her knees as, all around her, the jungle sings and screams.

If she manages to sleep, it is in bursts – cruel snippets that leave her dreaming of a bed that she never manages to wake in.

That first morning, she wakes with the rising of the sun and spends precious minutes wiping painful tears from her eyes. Only when she manages to stop her sniffles does the song of the jungle become less...welcoming, if it ever could be called as such.

The rustling in the underbrush is deliberate, if nothing else – predatory.

Barely in control of her breathing, Hero presses a hand to her chest and leans forward.

A panther’s eyes meet hers.

A sob escapes her.

The panther roars.

Hero runs.

It’s a hunting party that finds her at the end of that first week, half-starved, dehydrated, and sick out of her mind. She tries to shove them off of her as they come forward, but she can barely stay on her feet. It is one of the women – who looks almost like Beatrice, if not for the unfamiliarity in her eyes – that gathers her in her arms as Hero stumbles over a root only to find herself staring at the sky, unsure of how she ended up on the ground.

“It’s alright,” says the not-Beatrice, the accent on her tongue unfamiliar. Hero thrashes against khaki fabric and does not process the bowie knife this Beatrice keeps on her hip, nor the concerned and confused looks on the faces of her companions. Only once they’ve been able to soothe her to the point of near-unconsciousness are they able to pick her up, with not-Beatrice cradling Hero in her arms as though she’s no more than a child.

(The conversation that Hero doesn’t hear is full of confused noises; this hunting party belongs to a larger exploratory contingent, and to the best of their knowledge, there are no other humans living in Jumanji.)

They take her back to a piece of civilization carved into the heart of the forest itself – an explorer’s camp that’s grown over the years to resemble a small village. In her exhausted haze, she misses the stone-paved streets, the adobe-esque homes, and the bustle of trade that surrounds her on all sides. Instead, she focuses on what she can process: the rise and fall of her chest, the heat blazing across her skin, and the desperate pain in her head that refuses to let her fall into a real sleep.

She does not realize how close to death she is – was – until she wakes some three days later. Then, a woman who could be Ursula looks down at her and presses a glass of water to her mouth. Hero drinks greedily and listens with an ear that, somehow, understands the story of how the travelers’ doctor was able to bring her back from death’s unyielding doorstep.

It is here that she first hears the name “Jumanji” used outside of the context of the game she and Beatrice so unfortunately found.

It takes her several days longer, though, to figure out the proper connection.

Even then, the circumstances are almost too impossible to believe.

Wherever she is, she has become a proper Pandora; suffering for her crimes of curiosity. Whatever game she and Beatrice had unleashed upon the vineyard was a dirty trick; a devil’s device meant to ensnare them.

It is more than likely, or so she thinks, that she will never see Beatrice – her father, her family – again.

She does not leave the hunters’ home that day. Instead, when not-Ursula comes to find her, Hero all but drives her away with her weeping. She tucks herself into the corner of this established little tent and mourns for Messina, mourns for Beatrice, while the sun peeks through a hole in the tent’s cloth roof and marks the passing of the hours.

When the hunters return, Ursula and Beatrice’s doppelgangers among them, they coax her from her tears and into drinking from a cool glass. While they do not ask her to explain her grief, they sit beside her, the press of their arms against hers the most comfort Hero has found in days.

As night settles properly, she does her best to apologize – but neither of the women will hear her. Instead, they murmur the start of a song in a language Hero does not understand, lulling her gently – lovingly – back into a near-peaceful sleep.

*

(In a room Hero can no longer access, a board game lays abandoned. The linen sheets she once slept on have been ripped to shreds – though not far away, the corpse of a lion lays, ever-regal, on the wooden floor. Leonato stands in the doorway with Beatrice at his side, his eyes wild while his hands shake around one of the few rifles to have made its way past Italy’s most southern tip.)

Part II

It takes another several days for Hero to both sleep through the night and keep down the broth that the hunters try to give her. When her voice does not fail her, she manages a weak interrogation, to which the women oblige her.

“Who are you?”

They are a group of explorers from far away lands here to make rhyme and reason out of the jungle’s many secrets.

“Where are you from?”

Here and there; no one is able to give her a straight answer.

“How did you find me?”

Luck, for the most part, though the animals in the section of the jungle she was in seemed more riled up than they had been for a while. It is not-Ursula who tells her of Jumanji’s strange ecosystem; of the way that the animals seem to be as much a part of the land as the trees and the rivers.

Hero thinks on the creatures creeping through the trees back in Messina and, somehow, cannot bring herself to be surprised.

“How long have you been here?”

Not too long, but long enough that the little hunters’ camp they once established has evolved into a thriving, if small, town. The first day Hero is able to stand without her knees buckling, not-Beatrice takes her out and introduces her to the other residents. Here is a man who could be her uncle cleaning a knife as long as his arm. A little ways away, there are four families that Hero knows work under her father. Here, though, their children play with one another along long, dirt pathways while they sew or gossip or cook meat over an open fire.

In many ways, Hero comes to find, it is a more humid Messina; there is a sense of community in this place that’s almost enough to make her feel at home.

But the thought does not comfort her as much as it should. The first time she hears some of the children shriek, she looks over to not-Beatrice with an old, wry smile and feels a stab in her heart when her companion does not return her gaze. She excuses herself for that afternoon and curls up in the corner of her borrowed room, where she presses a hand over her mouth and cries until she’s exhausted herself.

Late in the night, she can hear pattering of tiny monkey feet on the roofs and the snarls of animals in the jungle. No creatures dare to come into this small shelter, however – and for that, Hero is grateful.

*

The first day Hero does not weep for the loss of her loved ones is the first day that strangers come to the encampment.

Despite her frequent tears, not-Ursula and not-Beatrice fight for her right to integrate into the explorer’s party. She wanders the camp with them, staying close as a few traders arrive from other camps and offer them food, wine, and wares. Children wave to them before returning to their games or chores, all while not-Ursula instructs Hero in the matter of bartering.

It is not so different, Hero finds, from the tricks the villa’s staff used in Messina. While that old pain starts to well up in her chest, it still makes her smile when she walks away with the fruit, beans, and meat they’ll all need to make dinner for the evening.

She is holding these goods against her hip when the first of the strangers appear out of the forest.

There is no ominous announcement to accompany them. But the calls of the traders grow louder, trying to woo these new clients into making a purchase. A few of the children grow quiet, and the ball game they’ve been playing in the street is rapidly abandoned.

It is that sudden quiet that prompts Hero to turn. Not-Beatrice, at one side of her, and not-Ursula, at the other, walk a few steps ahead, then look back to see where she’s gotten off to.

And at first, Hero does not understand.

The men who separate themselves from the jungle look for all the world like soldiers, though their uniforms are not the crisp whites and blues of Messina. Instead, they keep to brown trousers that have grown ragged for their time in the underbrush. They carry weapons Hero recognizes – some crasser models of the rifle her own father keeps. While the strangers do not brandish these weapons at the residents still out on their dirt paths, their presence is more than enough to send a few mothers scurrying back into their homes.

At the head of this pack is a man Hero – does not know, but thinks she may, in her heart of hearts. His face tickles her memory, and she squints at him as he stalks forward, a living thunderstorm in the midst of this otherwise bright day.

He comes to a stop not a few paces from her, his dark eyes taking her in with something akin to satisfaction.

Not-Beatrice has a hand around Hero’s elbow in an instance as he starts to speak.

“Jumanji invites a new guest into our midst, and you would squirrel her away,” says the newcomer, turning his head to crack his neck. “Why have you been keeping her?”

And in her sudden fear, Hero does not notice how stilted these lines sound; how the words seem to leave the newcomer’s lips without his permission. She does not notice the way he grimaces into the quiet that follows – dismisses that frustrated look when not-Beatrice comes to stand in front of her.

“You speak of strangers,” says not-Beatrice, her head thrown back like a queen’s, “and yet you’ve failed to introduce yourselves. Make yourselves known, lordlings, and we will do our best to meet your greeting in kind.”

The newcomer considers not-Beatrice with an air of indiscriminate boredom. He catches Hero’s eye over her shoulder and seems...fixed.

“It is not a greeting that I come for, good lady.” The flock of men behind him chuckle. “No. Jumanji has its rules, and you have broken them for long enough. Your visitor must be returned to the jungle. It is not your role in this game to shield her from her fate.” The good humor with which he seems to be threatening the lot of them is tinged with something else – but Hero is shaking, curling her free hand into a fist to press against her chest.

Some of the ingredients she bartered so well for fall to the ground.

“Why?” she calls out, as though the word’s been punched out of her. “What have I done to deserve that fate?”

The newcomer continues to look at her. He takes a step forward – and Beatrice has her bowie knife out and ready.

The men behind the newcomer adjust their rifles, then take aim.

Hero screams. The rest of the dinner ingredients fall onto the dirt path as she tugs her not-cousin back, putting herself between her and the coming storm. “Wait!”

The newcomer raises a single hand. The men do not lower their weapons, but neither do they fire them. Hero watches his face as he looks at her, tries to make sense of what she sees.

There are bags under his eyes, as though he has not slept in days. There is a cut bisecting his stern mouth, and while his dress is not fine, it is clear that he’s found the means to cloth himself better than the rest of his troop.

“You must suffer,” he explains to her in a voice that’s almost sympathetic but that is, in the same breath, as hard as tempered steel, “for that is the way of the world in which you now live. You have had your respite; that is more than Jumanji gives most.” He sends a glance up to the sky – and Hero sees his whole body shudder, as though possessed by some unwelcomed spirit. He grits his teeth and clenches his fists – and despite herself, she feels for him. She reaches out, ready to press a hand to his forehead or something of the like. Before she can, though, his rough hand wraps around her wrist and tugs.

Hero is thrown to the ground with a cry. One of the men lets off a warning shot as not-Beatrice rushes forward, her face the picture of fury.

“Tie her up,” calls the newcomer, turning on his heel and marching back towards the jungle. “Take her to the lagoon and leave her there – but give her her hands before you go.”

Hero feels tears prickling at her eyes and does not see him look back, does not see the flash of pain that comes over his features before he focuses again on the hunters. “If you go looking for her,” he tells them, “your own tenure here will be forfeit. Do not test Jumanji; you serve your own purpose here, but it will make of you the tools that it needs to perform its best work.”

With that, he disappears back into the underbrush, even as his men remain.

Hero tries to fight them off as they come to place rope around her wrists and feet. Not-Ursula bolts for the nearest tent, while not-Beatrice screams her name into the afternoon air. Some of the hunting party that first saved her comes running, but another man fires his weapon into the air, and they all come to a halt.

The last thing Hero sees before they drag her into the underbrush is not-Beatrice’s face – and it is almost a comfort. That familiar rage goes with her as her head collides with a rock on the ground, and she slips into blessed darkness.

*

There are several things, Hero realizes, that give away the machinations of the game – the constant motion of events, the endless terrain, the feeling of eyes always at her back. But it is the length of time that she spends unconscious after her fall that best makes the rules clear.

She wakes to find her hands free while she sits under a waterfall, abandoned save for the vultures that have gathered in the trees nearby. Hero spends far too long trying to untangle her feet, but she presses her back against the waterfall’s rock face and uses that time – that threat-less time – to consider everything that’s happened.

Jumanji is a game than hunts and harms; it seems to thrive when its victims suffer. The hunters’ camp was a respite that the game suited to its players’ needs, but it served and serves, in the end, to only exasperate its players’ pain. Above all else, though, the game takes shortcuts when it needs to. That is why Hero knows she woke only when the nameless men had left her and why she would not be able to trace her way back to the nameless explorer’s camp.

In short:

She is in Purgatory or one of the many circles of Hell, and she has no way to get out.

Well. Not no way. Hero leans back against that cool rock face and remembers what the game had spit at her before the world had so drastically changed.

_Roll a five or an eight to ensure her escape._

If no one had rolled either number, it would explain why she was still stuck.

Hero closes her eyes and lets the sound of the waterfall rush over her. She waits for the tears to come – but there are none.

In a way, she is almost reassured.

The game will not kill her – at least, not properly. No; it needs her pain to survive. So she will wait here, or so she tells herself, and see what comes of this next day; this one and the next one and the next until the world starts to make sense again.

*

(It isn’t until the light has just started to fade that she comes to another realization. She wakes from a half-doze and takes stock of what she has on her. Her linen dress was abandoned at the explorer’s camp and traded for a sturdy pair of khakis. The things she has now, though, she hadn’t carried with her into the market. Some of them, she hadn’t carried at all.

Either the game or the men have fitted her with a canteen. There is a packet of trail rations on her belt. There, too, is a knife like the one her not-uncle was polishing in the camp, tucked into a sheath cradled in the small of her back.

Most notably, however, is the note tied to that knife’s handle with a thin stretch of twine. Hero unravels it, protects it from the mist of the waterfall, and tries to make sense of the message the villainous visitor to the camp seems to have left behind.

It bears instructions.

_1: Do not stay in one place for too long; the jungle abhors inaction._

_2: Do not trust those things that sound like your loved ones in the night; they are meant to do you harm._

_3: Drink the water and eat the fruit; only the mosquitoes will hurt you._

The looping signature is short and half-stained for the subpar ink. Hero has to squint to make sense of it and manages, just before the light of the sun slips down below the treeline.

“John,” she whispers, her voice hidden by the rush of falling water. “John.”)

Part III

In the world where Messina is Messina and there are fewer things to fear, a villa once populated by a thriving family is overrun with jungle life. The players, now including Leonato, have taken up shelter in one of the vineyard sheds, where a half-finished game lays open on a picnic table. Ursula is nursing a monkey bite, and Margaret has Leonato’s rifle in her hands, ready to fire at any animals who might come knocking on their door.

Leonato rolls the die.

The result is neither an eight nor a five.

***

The next four weeks are the longest of Hero’s life.

She doesn’t know whether the time in Jumanji is the same as time in the real world. But she knows that she sees no one and finds no way to escape from the jungle’s seemingly endless stretch.

So she learns. And that is enough.

She learns that the monkeys will leave her alone if she feigns disinterest in their antics. Still, there is at least one of the smaller ones trailing her at all times, its too large eyes following her every move.

She learns that the panther – for there is one, but seemingly only the one – tends to keep to its own territory and prefers to hunt at night. The hippos, comparatively, prefer the marshes, and the elephants are – as everything is – aggressive.

She is safest when she makes her home in the trees, though she has to spend those first few days after leaving the hunters’ camp learning how to climb up more than a few feet. The temptation to stay put once she makes herself comfortable grows more and more difficult to resist, but John’s note burns a steady hole in her pocket.

So Hero moves on, hiding from the storms and the animals as best as she finds herself able.

She busies herself in what expansive free time she has looking for the hunters’ camp again. After her first week, she can’t help but wonder if she hallucinated it. As she gets better at tracking, though, it’s clear that Jumanji has humans in its midst. She finds their footprints in the sinking mud and some of their traps here and there throughout the trees.

Whenever she thinks herself close to them, though, there is some manner of creature or disaster that drives her from the area.

It’s how Hero knows that she’s close, these well-timed mishaps. Before long, the freak bolts of lightning that drop from the sky or the flash monsoons that appear out of nowhere are almost a comfort.

*

She passes that month in Jumanji with only the vultures and the monkeys for conversational partners. When she stumbles into John again, then – alone, away from his men, and looking more confused than a villain of his nature properly she should – she is almost surprised by her ability to make a sound at all.

He appears out of the brush like one of the many predators Hero’s gotten so good at evading. She leaps back, hand grabbing for her bowie knife, only to pause and cock her head. Despite the bitterness of their last meeting, her heart leaps at the sight of him, at the promise of another human’s company in this unforgiving place.

She opens her mouth to speak, but only a cracked sound escape.

John turns, as though he hadn’t noticed her, and blinks.

For a moment, there seem to be two of him. Hero sees the villain as he wants her to see: that part of him straightens at once and sneers down his nose at her, alone as she is in the mud and muck. But there is another part of him that is – shocked. Pleasantly surprised. It lingers in the corners of his eyes; a curious glow, like a cat that’s discovered a playmate that isn’t so easy to knock aside.

Even so, he makes a show of looking around him, hands crossing over his chest.

(And it’s here, Hero realizes, that she should notice that something’s off. If the duality of him would not give it away, then the way he has to fight to keep a stern expression as he speaks should.)

“Causing trouble, lady?” He eyes her ruined clothes, then fixes his attention back on her face.

The Hero of a month ago would have blushed and demured. Now, Hero meets his gaze and almost smiles. “No more than you are, sir.”

Her visitor rolls his eyes. “It seems you’ve been through more of our jungle than you might care to admit,” he says, motioning towards her – everything.

Hero follows his gaze and feels her mouth turn up in a self-deprecating smile. “Do you have anything that might fit me, then, sir?” she asks, careful not to let any of her exhaustion bleed into her voice. “I’ll admit, the cloth was comfortable once, but the mud hasn’t done it many favors.”

And there it is, the twitch of another smile that seems wrenched off of his face, not even of his own will. Hero narrows her eyes and watches him as he shifts in place.

“I could be...persuaded to make a trade,” he tells her, though he lowers his voice as he does. Hero leans back as he crouches down to her level, watching her with all the wariness she’s been watching him (not to mention the jungle around them).

He lowers his voice, soft enough that, were the jungle listening to them, even the trees could not hear. “You’re still alive, then?”

Hero nearly flushes, now, for the hint of pride she imagines she hears in that. “For the most part,” she murmurs back, “though I believe I owe much of that success to you.”

John huffs, and this time, Hero does not have to imagine that he sounds pleased.

There is another twitch across the whole of his being as he sits here across from her. He fights it back, but it’s there in the way he has to pull his fingers back from his own knife or his hunting rifle every few seconds or so.

Hero wonders if she should be tenser in his presence, but she cannot bring herself to care. Whatever threat he poses to her, she will accept it if it means a second more of human company.

She motions at her torn clothes. “What would you like for your coat, sir? It gets cold at night, and I don’t yet know how to skin what I kill.”

(She hasn’t killed anything, but she can play this role if she needs to.)

He seems to recognize the performative tone she takes on, and he is, bless him, quick on the uptake. He cocks his head to the side – and Hero can hear something moving alongside them in the brush.

A pang of fear fills her heart. She knows that’s what the jungle wants, but she cannot help it; she starts to look around immediately, ready for something to leap at them out of the unknown.

There is the slightest touch to her shoulder. Hero whirls – but it is just John, his bowie knife out and his eyes scanning the world around them.

The look he gives her out of the corner of his eye is...not amused, but something that fills even her frightened belly with butterflies.

“Stay with me, lady,” he says, as though they’re having an ordinary conversation, not watching for the next predator to appear from the jungle. “Stay alive, and I believe I can part with my coat on your behalf.”

He speaks – and there is the snake leaping at them from out of the grass. John pushes her to the side, and Hero stumbles, but does not fall. The snake, as thick as her torso and miles long, follows her, its forearm-length teeth ready to sink venom into her veins.

Hero moves without thinking, and the fight begins in earnest.

She can’t tell all what John does when he is out of sight, and she does not have the time to think on it. What matters, though, is that the snake does not have an immediate upper hand. It hisses and aims for her head over and over again, but Hero is able to dodge, coming in close to tear its mouth open a little further, and even, eventually, to take out one of its eyes.

(She wonders if she should feel guilty or disgusted with herself, but then the thing manages to trip her up with its girth, and she shakes those thoughts away.)

In the end, they do not defeat the beast together. It lets out a terrible gasp after what feels like hours of fighting, though, and makes its way back into the brush, short one eye, one tooth – and, when Hero looks, a fair portion of its tail.

John, it seems, focused on the parts of it that she could not see while she was fighting. He is as covered in sweat and dirt as she is, though of the two, it is clear who had the harder fight.

As the snake makes it tactical retreat, he comes to kneel at her side. The hand not still clutching his bowie knife brushes over those cuts she’s gotten from the brush, and she sees, for a second, genuine concern in his dark eyes.

It takes her too long to realize that he has not put away his knife.

He seems to realize it, too, kneeling over her with it poised like a snake’s fang, ready to strike.

They freeze.

Around them, there are no sounds save for the slither of a snake’s scales against the ground, and even that noise is growing quieter by the second.

Hero wants to close her eyes. She wants to bring her hands up to protect herself; she wants to scream. Instead, panting in some desperate attempt to catch her breath, she stares at this strange man and waits to see what he will do.

He looks back at her. The concern in his eyes gives way to fear – and she sees the knife twitch.

Her plea leaves her throat without her permission, as though it has been forced from her: “You promised.”

And it is this that makes him move.

John throws himself back from her, knife still in his hand. Before she can come after him, he scrambles to his feet, panting as though he’s being chased. He looks at her – and one foot slides forward.

Hero hears him swear as he tries to force the knife back into its sheath, but to no avail.

Finally, again, he looks at her. The sweat on his brow and the panic in his eyes cannot obscure his meaning; he apologizes to her without saying a word.

Slowly – as though he is holding some dangerous creature instead of a weapon that he, himself, wields – he tries to let go of the knife.

His fingers refuse to cooperate.

Hero sees him sigh. Then, with as much case as he can manage, she watches him shrug his coat off of his still-cooperating arm.

The left sleeve ends up torn, but it makes its way to the ground, nonetheless.

In some mockery of the life she once lived, he offers her a short bow. “I made a promise,” he rasps, before glancing at the knife. “Goodbye, lady. Let us hope that we do not meet again.”

For all of her fear, Hero still calls out to him as he turns his back on her. He walks away with a soldier’s stride and does not look at her; does not, it seems, dare.

Hero calls his name one last time into that empty clearing, knowing better than to expect a response.

The urge to curl up in a ball on the ground and just – let the jungle take her is almost overwhelming. Hero indulges that painful mourning in her chest for a moment. Then another.

Then, with a deep breath, she forces herself to her feet.

By his own advice, she knows better than to chase after him. If she gives Jumanji any indication that she is looking for him, she will never see him again.

So go the rules of the game.

She does, however, pick his coat up from where he dropped it on the ground.

The cut sleeve flaps against her hand as she pulls it on, but it is a good coat. Hero sinks into the warmth he’s left behind for a moment – maybe less.

Then, she takes her perpetual exhaustion in stride, pulls her hair back from her face, and walks on.

***

Beatrice fruitlessly wipes tears away from her reddening face, ignoring the bite wound festering on her leg. Across the floor of the shed, Leonato looks out the window, the remnants of a rake in his hands.

“Can we cheat it?” he demands, prodding at a vine that dares to make its way inside. Near his feet, Margaret lies, half unconscious, with a mosquito bite swelling on her arm.

On the board, a lion, a monkey, an elephant, and a hippo have nearly made their way across the board. Only a zebra lingers behind, in the same place Hero left it.

“I don’t think so,” Beatrice says, her voice breaking. “The only thing to do is to play.”

She rolls.

It is not enough.

***

He comes to her again much sooner than she expects. Not three days pass between their battle with the snake before she finds him again. Or, rather, before he finds her.

Well. Even that’s not quite right.

Before his men find her.

Hero is bathing in one of the rivers she’s deemed safe when she hears the sounds of footsteps in the distance. She throws herself under the nearest waterfall, pushing her clothes and John’s coat into a crevice in the rocks before hiding all but her nose and eyes underwater.

She watches the men make their way up and down the riverbank. They resemble hunting dogs more so than actual men, what with their noses turned to the wind.

He appears among the last of them, a darker coat brought over his shoulders.

He looks right at her through the waterfall – but he does not see her.

The men linger long enough for her fingers and toes to wrinkle, but they do eventually leave the shore. Hero does not come out of her hiding place for several minutes after they’ve gone, and even then, she hides herself in the water searching the shore.

He clears his throat from the opposite bank. Hero has to slam her hands over her mouth to catch her shocked scream.

The water, blessedly, covers her, though it is not her modesty that bothers her. Instead, she looks him over, eyes wide for Jumanji’s influence in his step and smile.

But he is not smiling when he sees her – at least, not with his lips. His eyes light in amusement, but otherwise, he is the picture of severity, the same as he struck her when they met in the hunters’ village.

“You’re lucky,” he tells her, coming to sit by the shore. He’s twitching, just as he ever was, but any injuries he took in their fight against the snake seem to have long healed.

Hero, whose back is still bruised and whose bones still ache, envies him something fierce.

“I’m getting better at it,” she replies, motioning to the broad stretch of jungle around them.

John raises an eyebrow, but Hero holds her head high. It is only then that he seems to realize that her clothing has abandoned her – and the flush that drives him to avert his eyes leaves something warm and brilliant in Hero’s belly.

“I see you made good use of my coat,” he says, voice dry.

Hero swims a little closer to the shore, unable to stop herself from smiling. “It’s far warmer than anything I had,” she tells him. The urge to reach out to him, to touch his hand – it compels her further forward, even as it frightens some deep part of her.

He does not back away as she moves closer, but she can see his twitching growing worse. She watches as he deliberately slows his breathing, as he chooses not to reach for his knife.

“There’s something making you do it, isn’t there?” she asks. It may be dangerous, coming to rest her elbows on the bank, but she does it.

John – would look surprised to see her, she imagines, if he didn’t look so exhausted. He opens his mouth, but no words come out. When he scowls and looks to the dirt, Hero moves a step closer to his side.

She wants to reach for his hand, wants to tell him that it’s okay, but she dares not cross those boundaries. Jumanji has made its point clear; she can look, and she can speak, but she cannot touch.

“You’re part of it all, aren’t you? Just nod.” The urge to reach out could make her palms itch. “It’s alright.”

John does not lift his head. Rather, he gives her all he can; a sharp jolt of his chin.

Hero longs to raise his gaze to hers but settles for taking another step forward. “Who are you here?”

That manic light returns to his eyes, and he looks at her, finally – unwillingly so, it’s clear by the way his hands close into fists at his side. “You have not heard of me?” says the voice she knows to be his and not – it is Jumanji speaking through him, but even the jungle cannot erase his exhaustion. “I am Don John; I am the bane of this jungle; I am the one who will cause you to suffer.”

He reaches out with that fist, and Hero can see the game uncurling one finger after another. His hand caresses her cheek for a second – but he pulls back just as quickly, as though he’s been burned.

The warmth in her sparks but finds a companion in a deep, mournful sadness. Hero watches John pull back from the riverside, fighting, it seems, ever instinct that the jungle has instilled within him.

“Hello, John,” she calls, careful to keep her voice soft. “My name is Hero.”

He gives her a rueful look, but keeps the distance between them, all the same.

“Of course it is.”

She would smile, but the sadness in her threatens to overwhelm her. Instead, she lets herself drift back from the shore to better give him the space he needs.

She is almost halfway into the river by the time he manages to get his breathing under control. He stands under her careful eye and does not approach her again, just looks at her, unashamed and longing.

“Good afternoon, Lady Hero,” he says, his voice no more than a low growl. When the wind whips in the trees behind him, he turns to glare at it, a look as fierce as Hero has ever seen.

Before Hero has the chance to bid him the same, he is gone, his quick steps carrying him into that endless jungle.

She fights the urge to sink into the river and stay there, just to escape the heat of the moment and the pain in her chest. Instead, as his shadow disappears, Hero swims for her alcove, pulls herself from the water, and waits for the sun to let her dry before pulling his coat back over her shoulders.

*

(What she does not see: Don John, Jumanji’s puppet, with his back against a nearby tree. He can hear her humming under her breath, can still feel the warmth of her skin burning beneath his fingers. Above all else, though, he can feel Jumanji stirring in his head, shrieking at him to turn around, to frighten her off, to take his knife and let poisonous words spill out of his mouth.

He is the jungle’s villain; the knife that finds the human weakness and lets it bleed where the animals and plants only terrify. He has a role to fill, and, failing that –

A one-eyed snake slithers by overhead, its giant girth weighing down the branches of thousand-year-old trees.

Don John watches it go and feels the threat there.

His options are running short.

He will not get away with this again.)

Part IV

Her last day in Jumanji starts like all of her others.

Hero wakes, cradled in the branches of a temporarily-benevolent tree and tries to remember what day it is. The time she once kept in her has long been abandoned; she does not know what day it is, let alone how long she has been kept in this accursed place.

She has, at least, fallen into a routine. As best as she is able, she clambers out of her tree, gathering John’s thinning coat around her shoulders to protect her from the worst of the day’s mosquitoes. She has not succumbed to illness again but rather learned that there are some plants in this living hellscape that ward the worst of the insects away. She reapplies them to her neck and wrists after she bathes in the morning, then again before she goes to sleep at night.

She cannot remember when she last saw another person, though the animals, too, have come to leave her alone. The once-familiar faces that greeted her in the explorer’s camp are as dim in her memory as those she once loved in Messina.

Now, she walks through a jungle that seems to have been abandoned, as though its residents have other places that they need to be.

The mud squishes around her bare feet. Hero takes comfort, now, in the feel of mud between her toes. She walks where the wind blows her, following curves in the land up and down hills that seem to grow steeper with every step.

By the middle of the day, she finds that she’s made her way onto a mountainside. Rocks replace soft dirt beneath her feet are welcomed for their stability, if not for their harsh edges.

Up here, Jumanji looks almost beautiful. Hero breaks from her trek for lunch and stares out and beyond. Here and there, she can see the waterfalls she’s called her own over the past however long. The jungle does not seem to have an end – but there, just near the horizon is a thin trail of smoke. The explorer’s camp, if she has to bet; it seems those once-caretakers weren’t figments of her imagination.

She eats her combination of nuts and meat and fruit and leans back, letting the sun bake into her skin. Her own father wouldn’t recognize her now, she imagines. If she had a mirror, Hero wonders if she would recognize herself.

But her feet do not want to let her rest for long. Before her muscles can freeze up, Hero is moving again, trekking even further up the mountainside.

The note John left her still burns in her pocket. She takes it out, on the nights she is brave enough to make a fire, and traces over the signature that he left behind. It is wrong of her, she imagines, to take comfort in the jungle’s own villain – but he has been kind to her, in his own way. At the least, he has not killed her, and his coat is still a shield to her on the days when it is difficult for her to rise up off of the ground.

She presses a hand over that burning pocket, now, as the sun begins to sink in the sky. The quiet of the world around her almost unnerves her; she grows jumpy with every step higher, even as the world and the worst of its threats seem to grow smaller, more distant behind her.

It is cold by the time the sun kisses the horizon. Hero finds herself an outcropping near the top of the mountain and presses her back against the stone. Feeling brave, she uses what little kindling she can find to start a fire.

The sound of rocks sliding down the mountain almost go missed by her keen ears. Hero catches the sound of the last of them hitting the ground and leaps, prepared for a rock slide or a snow leopard or –

John, coming down the mountain.

He stops as soon as he sees her.

Hero stares.

He is – worse off than she saw him last, though even then, he looked as though he had not slept. Now, the thick, black stubble on his cheeks begets dark shadows beneath his eyes. He is thinner than she left him, but most importantly, he is alone.

(And she is Jumanji’s best parts brought to this sullen mountainside, or so he thinks, his mind a scramble of orders and wants and a cultivated exhaustion – for she will always have a better chance of outmatching him if he is not at his best.)

Hero does not reach for her knife. She does not reach for anything. Instead, she forces herself out of her frightened stance and shifts, instead, to better make herself at home on the ground again.

Though it is growing dark, she thinks she sees a touch of exasperation flicker over John’s face, but he does not voice it. Instead, he looks between her and her fire. Then, with a pointed, poisoned glance, he looks towards the edge of the cliff.

Hero follows his gaze. Despite the implied threat, she cannot bring herself to feel frightened. Instead, she motions to the spot across the campfire from her, careful, as she speaks, to keep her voice soft.

“You look tired, John.”

Something in his face fractures. Hero sees his shoulders drop – and there is that old sense of sadness, that old longing to take his hand in hers.

“I am tired, Hero,” he says, moving to sit across from her.

She does not force him to speak, after that. Instead, as the sun sets on the horizon, they share what little they have with one another. Dinner consists of a monkey he’s skinned and dried as well as the last of her fruit and water. When he looks at her, weighing her canteen in his hands, she only shrugs.

Propriety has long left the daughter of Lord Leonato; it is one of many sacrifices Hero has made to Jumanji.

The sky is purple-blue by the time they finish their meal. Hero leans back against the stone of the mountain and studies the sky, her eyes tracing over constellations she does not recognize. On a whim, she points up and lets Don John follow her gaze.

“What’s that one?” she asks, pointing to a belt of stars. “Do you have a name for it?”

Don John squints, then leans back. With a frown, he shifts – then shifts again.

He comes to her side of his own volition almost without seeming to know that he does it. Despite her good intentions, Hero feels herself tense. For the first time since she’s seen him alone, though, she does not see his hand move for his knife.

“We call that Rifleman,” he says, leaning his own head back. “He chases the boars as the sun sets and falls, trying to bring home food for his family.”

Hero hums, a happy sound. In the flickering firelight, she thinks she sees John’s mouth turn up in a smile.

“Are there others?”

He looks at her out of the corner of his eye. Hero looks back, unafraid.

With a gentle hand, Don John reaches out. Hero almost pulls back as his hand wraps around her wrist, but he keeps his hold loose as he raises it towards the stars.

“There,” he says, voice rough, pointing towards another cluster. “The Cooking Pot. And there, the Sisters.”

Hero lets him guide her hand, entranced by both the stars at her fingertips and the warmth he radiates. Before too long, she can feel her eyes starting to droop, exhaustion finally getting to her.

Her body moves without her permission, and abruptly, her head is on his shoulder. She feels him stiffen beneath her, but her eyes are already falling shut.

His voice tapers off for a moment. But he slowly picks up again, knowing, somehow, that she’s listening to the rhythm of his breath and his stories even as she drifts off to sleep.

***

The vines have broken through the windows. Beatrice braces Margaret with her body as Leonato drags himself to the playing board. He is but a few spaces from the end of the game – and their room is still absent a player.

The zebra still sits too far back on the board.

Injured, bleeding, and with the world crashing down around him, Leonato rolls the dice one last time.

The noise of them echoes through the vineyard shed, even as, outdoors, an elephant trumpets with dangerous intent.

Leonato closes his eyes.

Beatrice shrieks.

Two four stare up at the shed’s broken ceiling.

And the noise –

Stops.

***

She wakes in the middle of the night to a tugging in her gut.

Hero opens her eyes and sees that the fire has all but died; only a few bright coals remain. There is fabric underneath her cheek; it rises and falls in a steady rhythm.

Hero turns to look, but the pull sings in her gut again. She gasps and presses a hand down, feeling the breath leave her body all at once.

John wakes as she rights herself and stares at her, eyes wide in the darkness. Hero sees him reach for his knife – but it is still in its sheath.

(He has not stabbed her in his sleep; whatever’s happening, it is not his fault.)

Hero reaches for him on instinct, and he’s there in an instance, taking her hand in his. “What’s wrong?” he demands, looking her over for wounds. “What’s happening?”

“I don’t know,” Hero answers, breathless. It feels as though she’s disappearing; as though this world is slowly becoming less and less – real.

The most solid thing she has is John’s hand in hers, and she clings, fighting against the nausea in her stomach.

“Hero. Hero!”

(And what Don John sees is this: a young woman growing less and less substantial as she slips through his fingers. He can read the panic on her face and feels in thrumming through him as though it was his own. Her pulse flutters under his fingers and he is seized by the clearest thought he has had in months: if he cannot protect her, then what purpose does he have?)

Hero looks at her companion – looks at him, tries to memorize every angry turn of his face. There is a trench between his brows; his nose is just a little crooked, and there is a scar cutting down one of his cheeks.

In the last moment that she has, she cups that injured cheek. John’s eyes go wide as her own slip closed.

She presses her mouth to his.

(And Hero has not kissed a man before, but she could not have imagined the way his stubble would scratch her chin. She could not have conjured the hesitation on his lips that gives in almost an instance to motion, to the return press, to the desperation she can feel as though it is the pulse of blood through his veins.)

She feels one of his hands move to drop to her waist – but there is nothing there for him to touch. For an instant, they are hot skin and pressure – and then she is gone, with the world around her fading to black while somewhere, someone shouts her name into oblivion.

And she wakes.

There is no jungle above her head; no trees, no monkeys watching her in her sleep. Hero jolts upright and reaches for a knife that she does not carry in this world. Instead of her threadbare clothes, she is in a linen dress. There is no coat to cover her shoulders, and for a moment, she feels as good as naked.

As she brings her arms up around herself, she fights to take in her surroundings. The world is – blurry, at the best, but it clears with every passing moment.

Slowly, she realizes.

This is one of her father’s sheds. The sun beating down in the morning sun coming through a broken window. Across the way, one of her father’s staff lies on the floor, waking on her own; Margaret, with Hero’s sister-cousin bowed over her like an avenging angel. Near her, an older woman reaches out to her and beams – Ursula, her oldest companion and second only to Beatrice.

And in the middle of the floor, sprawled out in front of a board game that’s rapidly folding in on itself, is her father.

Hero looks at Leonato and sees the tears tracking down his cheeks, even at this distance. Somehow – thoughtlessly – she avoids Ursula’s grasping hands and crawls to him, her arms weaker than they have ever been.

She collapses on the floor next to him and curls into his side, warming as his arms come around her, It takes her too long to realize that, even as he dampens her hair with his tears, she is crying, too. Then, Beatrice is at her back, and the other women, too, and the shed is full of tears.

(If Hero’s own weeping turns sorrowful, not a one of them notices; the relief of the day is overwhelming. But buried in her father’s chest, with grape-scented wood beneath her, Hero can think only of John’s eyes as she disappeared; of that broken expression and of the give of his lips as she kissed him goodbye.)

*

A year passes.

They throw the board game into the sea, all of them, the same morning that Hero makes her way back home again. Hero leans against Beatrice as they watch it sink down below the waves. Together, they limp back to the villa, where Leonato orders a meal from the household and a week of quiet, as best as their home is able to provide.

And slowly, they heal.

Hero wakes most mornings clutching for a knife she does not have. She hardly leaves the villa in that first month, too terrified to step outdoors and find herself in an unfamiliar jungle again.

Her father turns away guests for the whole of the year. The villa languishes, but Hero can see new lines around his eyes and does not blame him for his efforts. Slowly, slowly, she gains back the weight she lost in the jungle, even as the muscles she had to cultivate slowly disappear.

By the time the sun rises on the anniversary of her return, life has almost returned to normal.

Ursula wakes her by opening the curtains in her room and bringing her breakfast in bed. Beatrice, wild thing that she is, has taken to running amok in the stables long before the sun rises, but even she comes to join Hero for that morning meal. They sit together, heads close and fingers brushing over strawberries and biscuits.

(And Hero told them all many things about her time in the jungle, but only Beatrice knows about that final night. They’ve spoken of Don John only once or twice in the year that’s passed, but Hero thinks on him often, especially when the weather turns and rain comes down heavy on the villa’s clay roof.)

Leonato opens his gates to the world, this anniversary, and welcomes in the light as best as he can. When a messenger arrives in the middle of the day, the household is in an uproar for his timing.

Leonato looks to Hero before he allows the princes of the land to come tromping up to the estate, but even he cannot hide his excitement.

Hero – a little older, a little slower to wander, but always with love in her heart – moves with the rest of the women in their excitement at the potential for company. She stands between her father and Beatrice as the soldiers make their way into the courtyard, two princes leading the pack forward.

At her side, Beatrice is almost on her toes, looking for her favorite playmate. Hero, though, finds her eyes caught on a dark-haired figure – and finds that she cannot breathe.

On instinct, she reaches for her father’s hand. He looks at her out of the corner of his eye, and his smile almost slips, but he is a master, if nothing else, of appearing to be more composed than he seems.

The princes walk in tandem forward, one smiling, one not. In another life, there may have been worse blood between them, but the past year did not see the younger brother’s rebellion in the midst of the older’s war. Instead, what rumors circulated about him reported him changed, somehow – more melancholy, but harder working, too, with more time spent away from his brother’s villa come the end of the fighting and in the fields, instead.

Hero stares at him as he approaches, lost to all other company.

“Good Signior Leonato,” crows Don Pedro, the picture of Messina sunlight, “you are come to meet your trouble: the fashion of the world is to avoid cost, and you encounter it.”

“Never came trouble to my house in the likeness of Your Grace,” her father jests, reaching forward to embrace his new companion. By the time they break apart, Hero manages to compose herself – but only just.

Because those black eyes are staring at her, burning like coals in the night.

“I think this is your daughter,” Don Pedro is saying, his warm voice demanding her attention. Hero looks away from the company and smiles, letting the newcomer kiss her knuckles. He passes her along to his half-brother – and it is here the world freezes.

Because Don John looks down at her as though her mere presence has relieved a year’s worth of fears. Hero stares back as he raises her hand to his lips – and she can feel him, that man from the jungle, just beneath the surface of his skin.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you thought!


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